


Whittling Bolts

by peculiva



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coping, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 08:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16615241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peculiva/pseuds/peculiva
Summary: Daryl deals with the aftermath of losing his brother.Or, my imagination of the six years we missed and how Daryl tries to cope.





	Whittling Bolts

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, this is my first work in this fandom and I don't know how I feel about it.  
> It's basically just me dealing with the shit running through my head after watching 9x06, featuring my number one vulnerable badass. 
> 
> Seriously I've loved him ever since he shot a bolt through Greg Nicotero's zombie head.
> 
> Sorry for the mistakes, they're all my own and English is not my first language!  
> Also, of course I own nothing of The Walking Dead.

There're no bolts left.

His silent metal companion, hanging heavily over his shoulder, is useless. Banging against the planes of his back with every step, thudding and picking at his clothes, digging into the skin underneath.

Chipping away at his bones.

 

He doesn't look back.

Not at Michonne who he can hear wailing from behind despite the growing distance between them. Not at Maggie who's holding her back and certainly not at Carol standing at Michonne's other side.

 

Not at the bridge. At what used to be the bridge.

 _Be safe._ It rings in his ears as he slashes his way through the forest, breaking branches under his boots and whirling leaves behind him.

It's loud and he doesn't care.

 

He used to tease Rick about his heavy gait. About his inability to walk silently. He got better over time but there were always slips that, albeit they didn't necessarily scare away the game, Daryl noticed and that became so significantly Rick that Daryl grew fond of them.

  
The noise under his feet isn't a slip. He wants to be found.

And they find him. He doesn't stop and he isn't slow but he's loud so they hear him and follow.

They come from all sides, in a weird shaped circle, snarling and snapping. They're many.  
The steel on his back doesn't budge.

It moves as he turns, spins around and takes in the sight of death walking straight at him, but he doesn't take it off. Doesn't use it to bash the rotting heads in.

He stills.

  
He lets them creep closer, stagger towards him on broken feet with heavy outstretched hands, fingers gripping air on their search for flesh. They almost have it.

A hand grabbing for his shoulder, grasping it before losing touch and trying again, does it.

The torn, shredded foul meat stretched over cracked bones is nothing like the solid steady warmth that used to be there. But it's enough to remember.

  
Rick's hand, firmly on his shoulder, not always physically but squeezing often enough to remind him that he's got a brother who'll be there for him no matter what. Rick's gone but the shadow of his touch remains so Daryl yanks the crossbow over his head, frees it from the pointless position on his back, and smashes.

 

It's a blur, the mass murder of walkers he's committing.

Blood, bones, brains. It flys.

 

It's quiet after, just the wind blowing through the trees in shaky whispers and his ragged breaths burning lungs.

He shoulders the red splattered bow and goes on. Silent.

\---

Days pass by, he isn't sure how many. He drinks from a dirty creek that snakes its way through the woods. He doesn't eat. And he doesn't sleep.

 

At some point he just passes out.

  
Wakes up with a Walker chewing on his sole before he scrambles to his feet and stumbles on until he comes across a shed under a group of pines where he hides. Just like when he'd laid there like Walker food in the creek bed years ago, there's a camp to go back to. Just like years ago, question is if it's worth it.

Unlike years ago, it isn't.

 

There's a can with beans under a broken shelf. Funny how food like that could last longer than any of them.

In the corner of the shed lie the remains of what must have been the previous owner, a pile of bones, gnawed clean. The dead didn't have much to chew on so they made sure to eat what they could get. No brain matter left to flame back up and rust away again.

What stayed are the supplies.

A tent, frayed and tattered but enough to keep the worst rain out. A backpack with some medical equipment, a quilt that is a far cry from his old poncho but it's something nonetheless. A hatchet.

 

\---

 

He doesn't see another human being for months. Just roams through the forest, whittled bolts keeping him fed, alive. He doesn't live.

 _We_ _ain't_ _them_ he told Rick. He was wrong.

  
He is one with the walking dead.

 

Sometimes he sees Merle who's still as much of a good for nothing piece of shit as ever, running his filthy mouth over Daryl until it stops stinging. He's heard it since he can remember, has been used to it for as long as he can think, but up until this point it always stung.

Maybe numbness has its perks.

 

The dead guy in the shed also left a pack of cigarettes as a part of his legacy. The last smoke Daryl had was the one that got crushed under Carol's shoe. He savors them.

Lights them few and far in between and makes sure every single one ends up on the skin between his forefinger and thumb, without a pattern, circles without a name because it's impossible to place what this whole thing is.  
It's not Rick who keeps him going, not since the nudge of his shoulder that kept him from certain death.

It's Merle.

Daryl's back to surviving. Back to the roots. It worked before and it's working now so he avoids Alexandria and Hilltop and all the roads around, stays clear of any signs that show community, because rejoining a group, rejoining _their_ group is not an option.

He dreams of Beth with her pretty smile, blue eyes staring at him open and trusting. She insisted there was no point in losing hope, she told him to stop pretending he didn't care, calling him out on his bullshit. She kept prodding until he got it through his thick skull and listened. But it went missing a long time ago and there is nothing left.

 

\---

 

His hair grows longer, starting to reach his shoulders and tangling worse than ever. He cuts it with his knife every time it gets too much in the way but never back to the length it was before. He's never felt truly civilized and he doesn't intend to look like it. He trims his beard for practical reasons and he keeps his weapons clean but other than that becomes feral. Or maybe he always has been.

He finds two more sheds like the first one, both of them clearly owned by hunters before.

He adds solid metal bolts to the self-made ones in his quiver, a strong supply of ammunition, about as good as it was at the end of their winter on the road, right before they found the place that became his first home.

 

About half a year in, he contemplates going back.

 

Back to Georgia, to the woods that were just that much more humid, just a little better to hunt in. The walls of the prison are gone and the whole place is most likely flooded with Walkers but that knowledge doesn't keep the want to see for himself away.

 

It's Carol who stops him.

Some day she's just there and at first he's almost certain that she comes from the same place Merle and Glenn do, somewhere from the part of his brain that is just utterly and completely whacked.

But she doesn't keep her distance like his brother and his friend do, she walks up to him and wraps her arms around this thing that creeps through the forest, the thing that used to be her best friend.

  
It doesn't bring him back, the hug, but her fragile hands on his back and her solid warmth set something lose in him. She's the first person he's seen in what must be six months, the first person he encounters after he left the bridge and didn't turn back.

He reeks. Like sweat and Walker, to the point where he starts crunching up his nose himself, but she doesn't seem to care, not that she ever really did, clinging to him like she's not going to let go, and really she isn't. She eases her grip after a while but when she steps back her eyes run all over him and he knows she doesn't like what she sees.  
For a moment she looks as broken as he feels, the loss of Rick evident on her face but in with the sadness sneaks disappointment. A testament for what he's accomplished.

She knows better than to try words.

Sometimes it helped, like it did with Merle and Beth. But they don't talk about Glenn, they don't talk about Rick.

  
He doesn't talk about Sophia, not to her but neither to anyone else.  
So she doesn't speak, she just takes his hand and pulls him along, like he's a kid who doesn't know where to go.  
He follows her, craving her touch like the little bitch he really is and hoping that maybe she knows a way out, because truth is he is lost.

 

She leads him to a clearing beside a river. It's got trees around it, sheltering the place on the side of the forest and stocked up wooden walls that shield it from unwanted eyes on the other side of the creek.

  
He knows what she wants. For him to stay here, so she doesn't have to run through the woods for who knows how long for her to find him.

 

He shakes his head but she doesn't budge. "I'm not asking you to come to the Kingdom, or Hilltop, or Alexandria." Her voice is steady but it scrapes just the edge of cracking as she goes on. "But I have to know where you are. Where to look when I need you."

  
Truth is, she has a husband and a kid she looks after and she doesn't need him but he very much needs her so he relents. Forces himself to stay at the clearing at least six hours a day before he snaps and goes back out.

 

Carol is persistent.

She keeps coming around, pretending to be unaware of his ignorance. She reaches for his hands anyway and they sit there on a log, his big hands in her small ones, and Carol lowers her head with closed eyes. That's when he realizes that she grieves here, with him, not anywhere else. They are what's left. Of the group that camped near Atlanta since the start, they are all what's left.

 

She makes his first bolt after he shot them all.

Visits every now and again, forcing him to cook something when she shows up and making sure he doesn't smell worse than the insides of the rotting corpses that wander between the trees.  
Sometimes she brings supplies, like ropes and tools, some dishes and a decent sleeping bag. Sometimes she stays a night.

He keeps his talking to the bare minimum but she doesn't seem to mind, chattering away about the developments in the communities or silently working beside him. She's become good with bow and arrow and her skinning skills would have Merle's mouth turn up into an impressed shadow of a smile.

He wonders if Ezekiel is okay with how much time his wife spends out here with him but the one time he dares to ask she shuts him down immediately, stating that even if he weren't there wouldn't be a discussion about it.

He wonders what he did to deserve such loyalty from her, especially after he failed his own towards Rick.

It doesn't matter that he knows there is no use. Ne still keeps asking himself what if he'd just come with, instead of leaving on his bike with nothing but a pathetic _Be_ _safe_ thrown to the guy that showed Daryl the actual meaning of respect, by treating him as an equal.

 

\---

 

After about two years Carol stops coming for a while.

There's a disease at the Kingdom that requires all of her attention so she doesn't make her way back to him until he starts looking for her.

Going back to society is surreal. When he steps through the gates of the community Carol lives in, he sees the vision Rick had, what he wanted to achieve.

It's all there only Rick is not.

 

But the shiny houses are filled with bedridden people, coughing and burning with fever and muscle memory takes over.

For a little more than two weeks he manages to pull at the pieces he lost to the woods, glue them back together until he resembles something along the lines of who he was when dozens of people fell ill at the prison.

He helps Carol were he can, carries water buckets and crying children, cleans up puke, digs graves and goes out to hunt at sunrise, comes back way after dark, knees nearly buckling under the weight of the game on his shoulders and deer sled sliding behind him over muddy ground.

 

When Carol gets sick he quits his tasks.

Stays by her side as Ezekiel tries his best to get things back in order, makes sure little Henry doesn't catch it and that he's got food on the table three times a day.  
Carol recovers and she doesn't say it but her eyes plead him to stay.

He leaves three days later because he's craving the smell of wet leaves and earth and he can't live in a cage. He once said nothing scares him, but that was a lie 'cause people do. So he leaves.

 

Carol comes back a few months later and by the time she arrives at his poor little camp he's down to laying in his tent, shaking and hoping to die.

 

The bite on his abdomen is infected, blood and pus oozing out like it's a competition.

He sees her crack.  
He watches her through hazy eyes in the split second she thinks the teeth marks in is skin are shaped like the ones of a human and it's enough to know he can't go on like this.

Once she realizes the bite is not from a Walker Carol springs into action and he's too strung out to stop her. She manages the impossible and retrieves a bunch of antibiotics on a run she refuses to talk about that save him from certain death.

  
He longed for the outside when he helped at the kingdom and he sees Carol longing for her loved ones back behind the bars of civilization, but she stays.

Tracks and hunts and somewhere in the mess of his mind Daryl finds pride.

She also takes care of the puppy while he's out of commission. Scolds him for his stupidity but feeds the tiny thing anyway. He found it on a hunt, filthy and starved to skin and bones.

  
He didn't see the mother until she latched her teeth into his torso as he went to pick the puppy up.

She was dying, limping and bleeding, almost as thin as her breed. The knife he drove into her head was both defense for him and a mercy kill for her.

 

The little dog stays. It curls up at his side, right next to Carol who keeps putting wet cloths over his forehead despite his protests. She's relentless when she wants to be so he doesn't stand a chance and he owes her. He owes her so much he can't even begin to count.

  
It takes a while but once he's able to get up without toppling over right away or losing the contents of his stomach he escapes her insistent grasp, flees into the woods. It almost feels like back in the day. She loves teasing him and watching him squirm. He loves her.

He loves Rick.

Turns out it was never the prison that was home.

 

\---

 

The day Carol manages to make him laugh has her beaming until night falls.

It's barely a laugh, a quiet chuckle really but it's her victory and she creeps prodding until she gets some more. It's then that it dawns on him how much her being here, with him, really means.

He spent days on hunts with Rick.

Them, alone in the woods with only mosquitoes and cicadas as their company.

Neither of them was big on small talk so they barely spoke and Daryl reveled in the presence of a hunting partner that didn't run his mouth 24/7 and one cold winter night when they were trembling and scooting closer to each other in order to share precious body heat, Rick confided in him that he felt the same. After all Shane's favorite hobby was hearing himself talk.

 

Carol and him don't do small talk, either.

She's the person he trusts most in this world, has been for years.

She gets him.

The whole fucked up package, she's seen it all, knows it all and yet she keeps coming.

Most things he doesn't outright tell her. Because by the time he's worked up the courage to open his mouth she's already figured it out. It should be terrifying but it's not. She keeps him together.

 

He starts building a raft so he can cross the creek and move things from one place to another. He's got furs for the winter. He filters his water and he watches his dog grow big and lean. Before he knows it he's attached to the mutt like it's a part of himself. He's not alone when Carol leaves, he's got a silent friend who's there, regardless of how bad his mood is or how blank his mind.

Whittling a second bolt.

 

Four years in, Carol drags him to Alexandria.

She calls it a family visit and it goes about as well as expected. Michonne's become harsher than she was when he first met her, her only soft spot the two children she raises on her own. They greet each other but it's strained. She's the leader of a large community and he's disappeared into the woods, his only regular human interaction with Carol.

  
By the time they sit in Michonne's living room his skin is crawling with skittishness but Michonne kicks him in the shin and tells him she wants to see him here at least once a month, a tiny smile tugging at her lips.  
Rick is gone but his family is here and they all keep reminding him that he still belongs to them. He doesn't come back once a month, but every once in a while and makes sure he doesn't forget the faces of the ones he loves. Another bolt.

 

Little Asskicker becomes the badass he always knew she would be and her little brother grows along. Carol's hair keeps growing until it flows over her shoulders in silver strands.

He misses the spikey curls sticking up in all directions but he doesn't tell her because even though she doesn't look like the Carol who became his best friend she is still just that.

 

He keeps going, somehow.

 

 

Six years after he watched the bridge explode and his brother with it, and he starts feeling like he might be back to a full quiver one day.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's it for now. 
> 
> Just so you know, in my mind Daryl doesn't fully understand the concept of love, its different kinds or the fact that he's just important to Carol as he is to her. I tried to keep it vague with the way he thinks about love and what it means to him but be assured that canon-wise I'm a Caryl shipper, I just tried to make it fit the show where it is at this point because of course I got no idea how it will go on.
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> Any kind of feedback, comments, kudos, criticism would be much appreciated!


End file.
